JET - Sanctuary

by Blake, Russell

  “No. Of course not. I’m sorry. I didn’t even think about it…”

  “That’s understandable. You’ve got other things on your mind. But while we’re discussing necessities, I’m starved. Is there any way to get some food delivered?”

  Alejandro stared at her like she’d announced she could levitate, and then smacked his forehead. “Damn. I completely forgot. Yes, of course, but it’s likely to be pizza or something equally appetizing.”

  “Pizza sounds wonderful. Just cheese for me.”

  She went into the bathroom and stripped off, emptied the pockets of her cargo pants and emerged with her clothes. Alejandro was on the phone, pacing in front of the window. She poured in some powder and started the washer, and then retreated to the bathroom, where she luxuriated in a long, hot shower, even though there was no soap. When she was done, she stood, dripping, and wiped as much of the moisture off her body as she could with her hands. She then donned the robe and inspected herself in the mirror. A few scratches on one cheek, the scab beginning to lift on the other. Traces of discoloration beneath her eyes from lack of sleep. And the moist robe clung to her more closely than she would have liked. But all in all, she’d been worse. Much worse.

  When she returned to the living area, Alejandro was still engrossed in a discussion and barely noticed her. She occupied herself by breaking down her pistol and assuring herself that it was still clean, and then went back into the bathroom and collected her money, papers, and the small satchel with her diamonds. A knock at the door startled her. She chambered a round in the FN-750 and emerged from the doorway, weapon at the ready. Alejandro saw her, and his eyes widened, and then he nodded and barked something into the phone before hanging up. He moved to the door, looked through the peephole, and then opened it.

  The delivery boy received a memorable tip and departed with a grin. “It’s safe to come out. No ninjas attacking, just food,” Alejandro said, and Jet walked over to him, pistol by her side. He appraised her wordlessly and opened the box, and they stood at the breakfast bar and devoured the pizza, Alejandro fielding calls as he munched.

  Once satiated, she threw her clothes into the dryer and waited for him to get off the phone. When he eventually did, he had a worried look on his face. “I’ve got news about your daughter and your husband. They’re being held at the field headquarters, from what we can deduce. In the mountains, six miles from the mine. But according to my source, there are at least thirty soldiers there. So I’m not sure what can be done until they try to move them.”

  “What if they don’t? Or if they do before we can get to them? I need to be up there, not here. This was a mistake,” she said.

  “And do what?” He eyed her in her damp robe and shook his head. “Even if you have remarkable abilities, which you clearly do, that would be suicide, and we both know it.”

  “Maybe. But it’s my loved ones, not yours, so you can afford to be cavalier about it.”

  “Look, I made you a promise, and I’ll keep it. I’m a man of my word, even if I have my faults. But I need to get my father out of jail first – that’s my top priority.” His gaze locked on hers.

  She held his stare without blinking. “What can you tell me about the army headquarters?”

  “I’m waiting for a diagram. It should be emailed to me within the hour. I haven’t forgotten about your daughter. I’ve just got my hands full with trying to figure out how to get my dad free. The sooner that happens, the sooner I’ll be able to put all my resources into helping you. I mean it.”

  Jet studied his face for any sign of duplicity. She believed him. “Do you know much about the prison? Do you have any sort of layout for it?”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Let me see it. If breaking him out of jail is the only holdup to going back to San Felipe, maybe I can help.”

  An amused smile played at the edges of his mouth. “You have a lot of experience with this sort of thing?”

  She looked off into the distance, seeming to mentally drift away for a moment before returning her attention to Alejandro. “You could say that.”

  Chapter 27

  Alejandro left the condo to meet one of his men and get the details on San Miguel prison. He returned ten minutes later accompanied by a short, swarthy man in his fifties with a weasel face and eyes that seemed to look through her. Alejandro introduced him as Hector, his father’s most trusted lieutenant.

  “How do you know you weren’t followed?” she asked as she shook his hand.

  “Sweetheart, I’ve been doing this forever. I wasn’t followed,” he said, his words clipped, his tone insulting.

  Jet glanced at Alejandro. “You better hope not.”

  Alejandro spread a freshly printed set of documents on the breakfast bar. Satellite photos from Google Earth, a diagram of the prison grounds, photographs of the exterior, a neatly printed column of numbers.

  Hector tapped the latter with a stubby finger. “These are the guard shifts. They do three changes per day. One at six a.m., another at two p.m., another at ten. We got it from a contact inside.”

  Jet could smell nicotine and sweat radiating off the man’s rumpled suit. “How many guards?”

  “Too many. Up to a hundred on any given shift. All armed.”

  “What do they do in the event of a disturbance? If there’s a fight or a fire…or a riot?”

  “Generally they stay on the wall or in a safe area and let it play out,” Hector said. “In the case of a fire, we know too well how they respond. Eighty-three prisoners died in a fire a few years back. It was a national tragedy. There was an investigation and accusations that the guards were slow to allow the firefighters in, but as with most things here, nothing ever came of it.”

  Alejandro cleared his throat. “They rarely get involved in fights. Better to let the inmates kill each other, and then mop up after it’s over.”

  “What about rioting?”

  “Same sort of ambivalence. The fire that killed the inmates happened during a riot,” Hector rasped, his voice seasoned by decades of tobacco and hard liquor. “Like I said, they tend to leave the prisoners to themselves. Which for Gaspar Soto is a double-edged sword. The good news is that he’s surrounded by loyal men. The bad news is that it only takes one determined assassin to defeat everyone’s efforts to keep someone safe if they’re willing to give their life trying. And there are dozens of men in that prison who would kill anyone if it meant their family would be taken care of. Men with no chance of ever getting out, who live like rats.”

  Jet’s eyes widened. “Then he’s in with the general population?”

  “Yes, he was just released into it a few hours ago, and our men are trying to keep it quiet. But it’s hard. Gossip sweeps like brushfire in a prison. It’s only a matter of time until someone tries for him,” Alejandro said.

  “But he’s free to move around and isn’t hurt?” Jet asked.

  “He suffered a minor concussion and had some bouts of double vision, but our men say he’s getting better as the day wears on,” Hector said. “I spoke with him not an hour ago. Sounded fine to me, if a little weak.”

  Jet was studying the diagram Hector had brought. “These walls are a meter thick and reinforced concrete, correct?”

  “Right. You can forget ramming a truck through it. Or even a tank. Hell, you could crash a plane into those walls and it wouldn’t do much,” Alejandro said.

  Jet’s eyes lifted from the page, and she looked at Alejandro. “What did you just say?”

  Alejandro frowned. “That ramming through the walls is a no-go. I already thought about it.”

  She nodded slowly. “Let’s talk about the electricity for the prison.”

  Hector tapped the diagram. “City power. Backup generators here and here,” he said, indicating a small building. “When there’s a blackout, the generators kick on within ten seconds, supplying power to the doors and spotlights. So that’s not an option. And our source tells us that the main exit doors automatically lock in t
he event of an outage.”

  “These are the exercise yards?” Jet asked about the three open areas at the far side of the rows of buildings.

  “Correct.”

  She beetled her brow as she studied the photographs and stepped back with a sigh.

  “What is it?” Alejandro asked.

  Jet moved to the window, where the afternoon sun was streaming through. She paced silently before it, lost in thought as the sunlight warmed her, and then returned to where the gangsters were waiting for her to speak.

  “I know how we can get him out. Tonight, if you can work fast,” she said softly.

  “What? Just like that?” Hector said, his tone derisive. He rolled his eyes, obviously angry at having his time wasted.

  Jet cleared her throat and offered a condescending smile. “Well, it wasn’t that hard. It’s really just a process of elimination. Pay attention and maybe you’ll learn something,” she said.

  Hector bristled and his lip curled into a sneer. Alejandro shook his head almost imperceptibly in warning. The older man appeared to think twice and choked back his retort like he was swallowing a fistful of live ants.

  “How would you do it?” Alejandro asked her.

  “You’ll need to talk to someone at the power company and identify the location of the transformers that supply the prison. I presume you have access to satchel charges that might have walked away from a military base? You’ll need several of them. And timers. Or foolproof remote detonators,” Jet said.

  Hector snorted in contempt. “You don’t listen very well, do you? I just explained that the backup generators–”

  “Go on automatically,” she interrupted. “Which brings me to my next question. How difficult would it be for someone in the prison to either cut the belts on the generators or pour sand into the fuel system? We’ll want them disabled, so when the power turns off, they fail and there’s no electricity.”

  Alejandro considered the question. “We have a number of the prison staff on our payroll. It would be expensive, I’d guess. The person doing it would be taking a huge risk.” He tilted his head and eyed her. “Why? What would you accomplish by sabotaging them? All it would do is black out the prison. That wouldn’t get my father out, so what’s the point?”

  “True. But let’s back up and talk about the transformers. Do you have any demolitions experts? Ex-military?”

  Hector grunted. “Of course. Many of our men were in the service.”

  “Good. Then I won’t have to do that part myself. For a while there I was afraid you might not have anyone competent.” Hector’s color rose, and Jet could see his neck redden. She turned to Alejandro. “Now, how about at the airport? Anyone you’re paying off in the tower? Air traffic control?”

  Alejandro looked at her as though she’d asked whether he could play the cello. “Why would we have someone like that on our payroll?”

  She ignored his question. “Or maybe someone who owes you money or buys drugs from you?”

  Hector’s eyes narrowed. “I could ask. Why? What are you getting at?”

  “If you can get your demolitions people on the transformers so that the power gets cut at ten o’clock when the guard shifts are changing, that would guarantee maximum confusion, wouldn’t it? And if the backup generators failed, the entire area would be plunged into darkness, right? Probably for blocks around it, too.”

  Alejandro nodded. “Yes…”

  Jet glanced out the window again. “It looks like it’s getting cloudy. That could work well. Last night in San Felipe it was getting foggy as we headed into the mountains. Does it also get foggy in Santiago?”

  Hector was completely lost. “Sure. Sometimes the airport shuts down for hours. Depends on how hot it was during the day and how cool the night is. Why?”

  “Think it will be foggy tonight?”

  Alejandro thought for a moment. “It could be.”

  Hector cut in. “I still don’t understand what the hell you’re getting at.”

  “No, I bet you really don’t.” She shrugged and returned her attention to Alejandro and described what she had in mind. Both men listened with growing expressions of incredulity on their faces. When she finished, Alejandro began making phone calls, and Hector studied Jet like she was insane, or a genius. He tapped a cigarette out of a flattened pack and stuck it in his mouth and then pulled a steel Zippo lighter from his pocket and lit it, his gaze never straying from hers.

  “That’s got to be the most ridiculous, implausible scheme I’ve heard in my entire life. And I thought I’d heard them all.”

  Jet didn’t say a word. Alejandro had an impassive look on his face as he waited for someone on the telephone to give him an answer. When they did, he gave an order and hung up. “We got it. And we’re lining up the painter as we speak.”

  She glanced at her watch. “You have about six hours to put it all together. Not a lot of time, but doable.”

  Hector took a long drag on his cigarette and inhaled deeply and then blew a long blue trail of smoke at the window.

  “I’ll ride shotgun.”

  Chapter 28

  The ride to Gaspar Soto’s estate took forty minutes, the last ten of which were spent in the back of a white panel delivery van with Hector at the wheel and Jet and Alejandro in the back, out of sight. Two cars filled with Soto enforcers had joined them, creating a caravan as they approached the twenty-acre compound. At the iron gates, four seasoned men with assault rifles blocked their way and only opened them once Hector had barked rapid instructions at them. Inside the high walls, mature trees lined the perimeter as far as she could see – large oaks, their tops rippling in the wind. Off to the right in the near distance, horses pranced in a corral as several hands worked with them; to her left, acres of vineyards stretched for ages.

  The house was modest compared to the rest of the bucolic estate, two stories with several outbuildings. The van rolled to a stop in front of a circular stone fountain with an antique figure of Neptune gripping his trident as its centerpiece, and Hector turned to them as he shut off the engine.

  “They’re working on it in the back.”

  The rear doors opened, and several of the gunmen moved to either side of the vehicle, their expressions tense, as though they were expecting an attack at any moment, which was more than partially true. Alejandro had been coordinating the defense of the compound and now had fifty of the Sotos’ most trusted soldiers on the grounds. Everyone knew that it was just a matter of time until full-scale war broke out in a battle to the death. There was too much at stake for the Verdugos to leave anything to chance, and there had already been reports of some of the Soto strongholds in the city being hit, although without much success; the Sotos employed the cream of the underworld and their numbers included a large retinue of ex-commandos and mercenaries – more than a match for the Verdugos’ street toughs.

  Alejandro led the way through the house, which was furnished in priceless antiques. Oil paintings from a bygone era adorned the walls. They reached a set of French doors at the rear of the salon, and Alejandro pushed them open. On the lawn, two men were rolling metallic green paint onto the back of a Bell 206-B3 helicopter, having completed the front of the cabin in white. Hector walked over to the aircraft and inspected the job and, after a brief discussion, returned to where Jet and Alejandro were standing.

  “They’ll be done in fifteen minutes and, allowing for some drying time, will apply the Caribineros de Chile lettering on the tail. By the time we’re done, it will be indistinguishable from a police helicopter,” he reported.

  Alejandro edged to the side and had a subdued discussion with one of Hector’s associates. When he returned, his face was glum.

  “We have a problem. The pilot won’t do it. We offered a king’s ransom, but he refused. He’s a straight shooter, old school, and has been with my father for twenty years. But he pointed out that if anything went wrong, flying the helicopter would be either life in prison or suicide.”

  “Can’t sa
y as I blame him,” Hector said. “Did you try a more persuasive approach? Maybe his family?”

  Alejandro shook his head. “I can’t do that. My father would disown me. That’s not how you reward trusted friends.”

  Hector spit on the lawn and lit another of his unending stream of cigarettes. “So now what do we do?”

  Jet looked up at the sky. “It’ll be dark soon. Has anyone gotten word on the air traffic situation? Do you have someone at the airport you can get to?”

  Alejandro placed a quick phone call and then shook his head. “Unfortunately that came up dry, too.”

  Jet nodded. “Well, it just means that the bird will need to stay low and go in fast. It’s still possible to pull it off, but it will require more scrambling. You’ll need to have a car waiting and get your father clear, because without someone at the airports to run interference for you it will be just a matter of minutes before the landing area is swarming with police.”

  Alejandro glanced at Hector and moved next to him. Jet walked over to the helicopter as they chatted, and noted that it was in good condition – it looked like a nineties variant, in nearly new shape, evidently no expense spared on maintenance. Crime clearly paid well indeed. When she returned, Alejandro was back on the phone and Hector had an ugly smile on his face.

  “What?” Jet asked.

  “You’re not the only one capable of innovative ideas, young lady. We might have a way to deal with the radar systems.” He told her what he had in mind.

  “You think you can do that?”

  Hector shrugged. “For enough money, you can accomplish almost anything.”

  Alejandro hung up and nodded. “Another problem solved. It’s taken care of. But there’s still the issue of who’s going to fly the chopper. If we can’t resolve that, the rest of this is for nothing.”

  Jet sighed. “Didn’t I mention that I’m certified to fly both fixed wing and helicopters?”

  Alejandro shook his head. “No, it never came up.”

  “It’s been years, but they say it’s like riding a bicycle. I’ll need an hour or two in the cockpit to familiarize myself with the layout.”